


Habit

by orphan_account



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-10
Updated: 2010-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-14 07:18:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	Habit

Written for the song prompt - Bird York "Wicked Little High"  


  


 _You're the third scoop  
The second pack  
You're the reason for therapy  
Why I should go back  
_

 __

 _  
_Cuddy kisses him, and he feels the endorphins firing off like Roman Candles all over his body. She kisses him like she's scared he'll break, and like she'll die if she doesn't.  It's overwhelming, and an instant addiction.  And for the first time in almost a year, House is back on familiar ground.

This is going to be fucked up, he knows that from the start.  And like every bad decision he ever made, he does it anyway.  
 

  
*

  
She can still surprise him, which House did not expect (he's arrogant enough to predict even the unknowable, after all).   He's built a picture of her over the years, coloring outside the lines like only he can, and erasing every trait she's grown out of or had trampled out of her by the realities of the big, bad world.  He told her, more than once, that she doesn't see the gaping chasm between _what is_ and _what could be_ , and Cuddy refused to accept the simplification.

He'll never admit that she was right to refuse, that she's more complex and intriguing than he could ever have hoped.  She brings them strawberry ice cream from the freezer at 5am and calls it breakfast, and though he'd rather have chocolate, or mint, it turns out to be the best ice cream he's ever tasted.  He expected early nights and crap from the health food store that he'd ignore in favor of beer, but at every twist and turn, it's a little bit different to what he would have thought.

House won't ever admit he might be wrong, but when she kisses him with cold lips and the taste of fruit on her tongue, he figures he can sit on that little secret a while longer.

  
*

Antagonizing her comes as naturally to House as breathing, and Cuddy can't hide the little flush of excitement when they resume their verbal warfare a few days into what could be considered the honeymoon period.   She keeps pushing him to conform, which he can't stand, and he retaliates one day by sneaking a cigarette on the balcony before she shows up for a lunch hour quickie.  

 

She refuses to kiss him on the mouth, and House is disgusted to find that it bothers him.  He focuses his energies on getting her off, and throws the rest of the pack in the trash as soon as they've parted company, straightening rumpled clothes as they go.  

  
* 

Nolan is still a pain in the ass, is the conclusion from House's first five minutes back in therapy.  Actually, he'd come to that conclusion before leaving the parking lot, but he liked to pretend like he gave the guy a fair shot.  By the end of the world's longest session (45 minutes on the clock, three centuries in House's head) he already knows he won't be back.

Because given the choice between continuing to have sex with Cuddy and talking about things that might somehow stop that from happening, it's the definition of a no-brainer.

  
*

It won't work forever, he's already sure of that.  Just like he built up a tolerance to Vicodin, to Johnny Walker and the victorious first flushes of sobriety, the novelty and potency of Cuddy will wear off.  

He's expecting it to happen any day now, in fact.  Expecting that her boobs will suddenly stop feeling like a perfect fit for his hands, or that he'll feel the heat of her sliding along his shaft and it won't blow his mind.  Maybe the sniping will stop being fun, or she'll wake the hell up and realize what she's throwing away just to be with her college fantasy gone wrong.  

It's just... well, it doesn't seem any closer to happening.  Maybe House is rusty, unused to spotting the signs.  Maybe they'll get a longer shelf life because twenty years of frustration takes a long time to clear out of the system.  Maybe he loves her, but he'd join the damn Peace Corps before he'd say such a stupid thing out loud where someone might actually hear it.

So for now, he's just going to roll with it and enjoy it while he can.  The sort of thing that 'one day at a time' was turned into a cliché for, right?


End file.
